The race between Michael Arcuri and Richard Hanna for the seat in the 24th District of New York is reaching its final weeks. Throughout the race polls have been taken to in order to determine where each candidate states. According to Paul Herrnson, “Polls are amongst the most common means of gauging public opinion.” The most recent poll taken October 12-14 by The Hill/Penn Schoen & Berland Democratic poll has shown Arcuri to be 10 points ahead of Hanna. Results similar to this have been shown in polls throughout the race. It is apparent that Arcuri has a fairly comfortable lead. It is a lead that wasn’t predicted at the beginning of the race and has continued to steadily increase.
In response to the results of their poll The Hill called the race between Arcuri and Hanna the race of the day on October 21 saying:
“Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.) is one incumbent who appears to be in good position to survive next month's expected GOP wave.”
“Arcuri's strength comes among independent voters, where he leads Hanna by nearly 20 points — 46 percent to 27.”
“He's also winning over a significant number of Republicans. Arcuri has the backing of 19 percent of Republicans in our poll, while just 8 percent of Democrats are backing Hanna.”
Most recently the two candidates debated at the Rome Chamber Breakfast, according to The Oneida Daily Dispatch, on October 20th with both candidates throwing jabs on issues such as taxes, the stimulus bill, and campaign ads that have gotten consistently more hostile as the race has progressed.
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| Arcuri and Hanna debating at the Rome Chamber Breakfast |
With Hannah winning the election by a 5-point margin, it appears that Arcuri's high approval ratings were not strong enough to withstand the GOP surge of seat turnover. Do you think that the voters in NY-24 decided to just jump on the Republican bandwagon of giving a new majority a shot and thus cast their votes for Hanna, instead?
ReplyDeleteThis district’s election results successfully fulfilled Herrnson’s statement that polls are useful in gauging public opinion. These reports on the poll conducted by The Hill on October 21st provide several reasons hinting that Republican Arcui would be victorious. Republican Representative-elect Hanna was one of 52 Republicans to defeat a Democratic incumbent for a House seat in this past election. While this poll was correct in its projection of a Republican victory, it is very likely that the sample population of this poll overrepresented Republicans in this district. Also, the number of Republicans that vote in mid-term elections is significantly greater than the number of Democrats that vote, likewise more Republicans participate in these public opinion polls than do Democrats. Overall, the poll was correct in its prediction largely because many more Republicans vote than Democrats but it is probable that the poll did not accurately gauge the true public opinion but rather the opinion of the district. Had this been a mid-term election in which the Democrats were expected to make a major congressional comeback, this poll would not have been correct in its prediction nor its gauge of the public opinion since the sample population was most likely a misrepresentation of the district itself.
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